Andreessen Horrowitz – Dataconomy

Coinbase Picks up Largest Amount of Funding for Any Bitcoin Startup

Eileen McNulty — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 15:32:53 +0000

Coinbase, the San Francisco, US based provider of bitcoin wallet and exchange service, has secured the largest investment in a Bitcoin startup ever through a $75 million Series C financing round closed earlier this week.

Led by DFJ Growth, with existing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Ribbit Capital participating, the round also saw renowned capitalists such as The New York Stock Exchange, a subsidiary of USAA, and BBVA (a large multinational bank) along with individual investors like former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer pooling in. The total investment in the company so far has gone up to $106 million, announced a Coinbase blog post.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told CoinDesk: ”I think this just really changes the conversation. There’s smart money out there that is betting big on this and is totally unphased by the whims of the price and what the market is doing. They’re much more concerned about the fundamentals of what’s happening in the network … and across those metrics, everything is looking great.”

The funds will ensured the continued global adoption of Bitcoin, fueling the efforts to make it a mainstream entity and with the involvement of respected institutions in this round things might just get better.

Coinbase like many other startups hasn’t released its financial statements and the status of its profitability remains unknown. However, the company still claims growth with 2.1 million consumer wallets, and more than 38,000 merchants using Coinbase services, points out Wall Street Journal.

While speaking to Coindesk about the global outreach strategy Armstrong noted that area of interest will be underbanked territories, “areas that are underserved by traditional payment systems right now, areas where people’s next alternative is dramatically worse.”

Stack Exchange Gain $40m to Become to Sole Platform That Matters for Dev Hiring Companies

Eileen McNulty — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 11:25:26 +0000

Stack Exchange the startup behind the popular Q&A platform for professional and enthusiast programmers, Stack Overflow, has secured $40 million in investment in a Series D round of funding, it revealed earlier this week.

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and saw participation from existing investors like Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions, and Index Ventures, bringing the total funds raised till date to $70 million.

Founded in 2008, the startup’s Overflow platform has garnered tremendous respect within the developer community owing to its no frills, programmers-first policy.

“Everything about how Stack Overflow works today was designed to make programmers’ jobs easier. We let members vote up answers, so we can show you the best answer first. We don’t allow opinionated questions, because they descend into flame wars that don’t help people who need an answer right now. We have scrupulously avoided any commercialization of our editorial content, because we want to have a site that programmers can trust,” explained Joel Spolsky, the chief executive of Stack Exchange.Chris Dixon, a personal investor in the company as well as a partner at the Andreessen Horowitz will be joining the board of directors as an observer. He believes that the platform has become, “the indispensable home to the world’s programmers.”

This investment for the New York based startup comes at a time when there is a documented dirge of developers and programmers across various geographies.

With over 26 million developers, Stack Exchange through the Stack Overflow platform provides a fertile hunting ground for more than 10000 companies including biggies like Amazon and Microsoft, to hire talent, as Fortune points out.There has been disclosure over the company’s valuation or revenue, but it said that it is not profitable.